Off-season thoughts (Vol. VII)

Is there any question the greatest need for the Browns during this offseason is replenishing and reimaging the wide receivers roster?

Defensive tackle also ranks right up there, but there is a much greater requirement on the offensive side of the football in the passing game, which lies in shambles following the club's lamentable showing last season. 

One quick glance at the six wides on the current 77-man off-season roster reveals the Browns' biggest weakness when in possession of the football: Jarvis Landry, Rashard Higgins, Donovan Peoples-Jones, Anthony Schwartz, Ja'Marcus Bradley and Ryan Switzer. Read 'em and weep.

There isn't one scary name there unless you believe Landry, if the Brown choose to keep him and rework his contract, can successfully come back from an injury-riddled, disappointing 2021. He says he wants to. The question is whether the Browns feel the same way. 

The rest of this group are the cross-your-fingers-and-pray type.

Peoples-Jones has been inconsistent and unreliable in his first two National Fotball League seasons. Higgins used to be one of Baker Mayfield's favorite -- and yet infrequent -- targets, but fell into disfavor last season for some unknown reason and probably won't be back.

Schwartz is a world-class sprinter masquerading as a football player. He should be remembered as the target of the pass in week two against Houston when he quit on a route that led to a Mayfield interception and a serious left shoulder injury when the quarterback attempted a tackle on the return.

That was that play that started Mayfield on the downward spiral of numerous other injuries that seriously hindered his ability to play winning football. It ultimately resulted in the Cleveland offense dying slowly on a weekly basis until he finally packed it in due to the extreme pain he had incurred.

Looks like it will take a second season for the Browns to discover Schwartz has unquestionable speed, but  extremely questionable hands and football acumen. The kind of speed he can deliver doesn't kill on a football field.

Bradley and Switzer are practice-squad material. rounding out a wide receivers room that easily qualifies as one of the worst in the league and is deserving of serious attention from General Manager Andrew Berry. Whether it's the college draft, free agency or the trade route, it's time for a makeover.

He needs at least two or three new faces in that room. He should be able to find two while plumbing the quality depth of the collegiate wide receiver draft class this year. While Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave are terrific and the favorites of Ohio State fans, my favorite -- and he should be there at 13th when the Browns are called -- is Southern Cal's Drake London.

I love tall, lanky wide receivers with big hands who can catch the football. At 6-5 and 210 pounds, London is a disciplined route runner who specializes in winning 50/50 throws and piling up yards after catch. He is the kind of target Mayfield needs.

After that, just to emphasize the importance of loading up on young productive wideouts, it would behoove Berry to consider trading back up into the latter stages of the first round and picking off someone like Olave, who might not be there, or big (6-3, 225) Treylon Burks of Arkansas, who most likely will.

Mayfield needs help and this is the year the draft can provide it.

Off-season thoughts (Vol. VI) 

There seems to be some confusion as to who will control the offensive huddle for the Browns this coming season.

Baker Mayfield, who struggled mightily through most of the 2021 season before packing it in with one game remaining, is the obvious choice, right? After all, he is the incumbent. His general manager sort of sees it that way.

"We fully expect Baker to be our starter and bounce back,"Andrew Berry said a couple of months ago in his season wrap-up  session with the media. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the four-year veteran quarterback. 

If I'm Mayfield, I'm feeling much more confident if Berry had said something like this: "With all due respect, I'm surprised you're asking such a question. Of course, Baker is our starting quarterback. Why would you think otherwise?"

He did not remove all doubt. He left at least a sliver of the door open to the possibility, albeit slim at this point, of the situation changing. It's safe, though, to assume Case Keenum will not be back for year three as the backup.

Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski had numerous opportunities to use Keenum with the injury-riddled Mayfield playing well under 100% most of the season. With two exceptions, he remained tethered to the bench when he was clearly the healthier quarterback.

By picking up Mayfield's fifth-year option without the opportunity of extending it sent a clear message to the quarterback and his representatives. "We'll pay you the (roughly) $18 million this year, but you'll have to show us a lot more if you want the big contract."

Sure sounds like a prove-it contract, which would be a slap in the face for a player who at one time was the face of the franchise.

Berry has options and it's possible the situation changes by the time training camp rolls around this summer. With the likelihood of Keenum gone, Mayfield ostensibly might find himself competing for the starting job.

Numerous veteran quarterbacks with starting credentials will be available in the free-agent market or as trade bait. The latter group includes Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers, Seattle's Russell Wilson, Matt Ryan of Atlanta, Carson Wentz of Indianapolis, Minnesota's Kirk Cousins and Derek Carr of Las Vegas.

Forget Rodgers and Wilson. They are not in the Browns' future. If they are moved, it most likely will be to a contending team like the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are seeking a veteran to replace the retired Ben Roethlisberger. Ryan, Cousins and Carr are possibilities at best.

Among the free-agent group are Teddy Bridgewater, Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota, Mitch (Mitchell) Trubisky and Andy Dalton. Bridgewater is the only one of this collection capable of relegating Mayfield to the bench.

A third option would be the college draft, but I don't see Berry venturing in that direction until maybe the third day, if that, for a mediocre quarterback class. Too many other vital areas to take care of like wide receiver and defensive line.. 

The biggest upset overall is Mayfield fully recovers from the multitude of injuries that clearly hampered him last season and returns to the form that helped propel the Browns into the 2020 National Football League playoffs.

Offseason thoughts (Vol. V)

OK, let's get this one out of the way before it spirals out of control . . . 

The main reason the Odell Beckham Jr. era with the Browns failed miserably was not the man himself. It wasn't his attitude or approach to the game. By all accounts, he was a model teammate; highly popular in the locker room.

The biggest problem was the coaching. Beckham never had a chance to fit into the Cleveland offense for a number of reasons. First and most important, he and his quarterback struggled mightily to get on the same page and missed.

That he was able to immediately fit right in when he signed with the Los Angeles Rams after the Browns finally decided to pull the plug on him midway through this past season is a perfect example. He and Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford clicked right away.

After spending 29 games with the Browns -- yeah, it seemed much longer than that -- and failing to produce on a way-too-regular basis, he moved right in after signing with the Rams and resumed a career that had previously produced spectacular numbers and moments with the New York Giants.

Why? He and Stafford were total strangers in a football sense. In eight regular-season games, though, they hooked up for five touchdown passes. Then they tacked on two more scoring grabs in four post-season games. Seven touchdowns in 12 games before OBJ went down with another ACL tear in the Super Bowl victory over Cincinnati.

In those 29 games with the Browns, Beckham was on the receiving end of a touchdown pass seven times. SEVEN TIMES! Again, why? Why was he such a bust in Cleveland and a savior -- and perfect complement to Cooper Kupp -- in L.A.?

Questionable -- trying to be nice here -- coaching from the offensive staff. Freddie Kitchens had no clue, although Beckham posted a 1,000-yard season in 2019, but with just four touchdowns. Kevin Stefanski was worse. He and offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt vainly tried everything. The harder they tried, they more they failed to take advantage of the wide receiver's unique talents.

The common thread here is the quarterback. Yep, it's time to wail a little on Baker Mayfield, whose best eight-game stretch as a professional came with Beckham idled by his first ACL tear midway through the magical 2020 season that saw the Browns reach the postseason for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Or is it fair to wail? Mayfield is such an easy target for blame, although it's difficult to hold him totally responsible for what happened this past season. The fault there lies almost exclusively with those who greenlighted him to start a majority of the games while operating at well under 100 percent health. 

It's hard to pinpoint exactly why it all fell apart with Beckham. Did Stefanski lose confidence in him? It's logical to think maybe he did after failing even though Beckham was healthy and available for him for just a dozen games the last two seasons. 

It was a failure compounded by an injured quarterback, a pandemic that ravaged the roster on a weekly basis and a situation that hounded the club constantly through social media until a stunt pulled by his father helped goose his departure. 

Topping that off is a raging argument, triggered by the NBC-TV crew televising the game suggesting Beckham was booted out of Cleveland. In actuality, he all but begged to be released since he was being used sparingly.

Thin-skinned viewers responded predictably, taking it personally and castigating the venerable Al Michaels and loquacious Cris Collinsworth. Either they were misinformed as to why Beckham will soon be fitted for a Super Bowl championship ring or misunderstood the situation and tried to get cute.

It landed with a thud in Browns Nation. Time to move on.

Off-season thoughts (Vol. IV)

From the department of "Here We Go Again" comes this nasty little soon-to-be-fact . . . 

That wide-open window of opportunity the Browns have enjoyed the last couple of seasons has been slammed shut by the team formerly known as the Bungles.

It took exactly one season for the Cincinnati Bengals to rise to the top of the American Conference after fashioning one of the worst records in 2020. And they did it the hard way -- winning three straight playoff games on the road to reach the ultimate pinnacle in professional football.

While the Browns struggled throughout the 2021 season, the Bengals showed how it could be done with a lesser-talented group than Cleveland from a full-roster standpoint, continuing to find ways to win as they routinely shocked the experts.

The Browns still have the talent that elevates them to competitive level for the next couple of seasons, but they no longer are a team to be reckoned with regard to mounting a challenge to do something they haven't done since returning to the National Fotball League in 1999.

Win the AFC North.

That's got to gall Browns Nation, blindsided by a team practically no one outside Cincinnati believed would, let alone could, pull off a miracle while the Browns licked their wounds after a lackluster 8-9 campaign.

For a while there, in fact as recently as this past season, the Browns were seriously given by many pundits an excellent chance of taking the division en route to even even loftier goals. And then they went out and stupendously underachieved.

The young Bengals are the new king of the block in the division. And they will get even stronger when they get the offensive line straightened out. They are in position now to dominate the North for at least the next five seasons, much like Pittsburgh and Baltimore dominated much of the last two decades.

It's not as though the Browns will slip back again and become annual occupants of the AFC North cellar. The Steelers will be weaker next season following the retirement  of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. And you can count on the Ravens, when healthy, to challenge again.

If Cleveland head coach Kevin Stefanski stubbornly refuses to change with the times and play aggressive football on both sides of the ball, the Browns and Steelers most likely will battle for the basement on an annual basis for at least a few years.

Face it. The Bengals have way too many weapons and a head coach not afraid to use them. It didn't take long for Joe Burrow to emerge and then rapidly ascend as the best quarterback in the division and it's not even close. With a terrific group of wide receivers and a stronger line, there's no telling how high his ceiling is.

Wouldn't be surprised, though, if more than a few Browns fans believe if the Bengals can do it, why not the Browns? They still have all that talent, right? Talent means nothing -- the Browns proved that big time this past season -- if it is not maximized.

There is no question the Bengals overachieved their way to the Super Bowl in Los Angeles in about 10 days. Even if they lose to the Los Angeles Rams, it will not dampen the fact they accomplished something 30 other National Football League teams did not.

Zac Taylor, who struggled mightily (6-25-1) in his first two seasons as head coach in Cincinnati, has shown the way. Whether Stefanski chooses to play copycat in what is a notorious copycat league very well could determine the Browns' fate in the new season.